Machinations
by dib07
Summary: The decepticons have gone back into hiding. Sam wants a normal life. Optimus Prime adopts a small, young decepticon and the autobots believe that it is the beginnings of a seeded plot by Megatron. Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers.
1. Chapter 1

**Transformers: Optimus Prime**

**Machinations**

Rating: 17NC

**Warning: **May contain violence, peril and dark themes.

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_**Summery: **__The decepticons have gone back into hiding. Sam wants a normal life. Optimus Prime adopts a small decepticon baby and the autobots believe that it is the beginnings of a seeded plot by Megatron._

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**This be my first Transformers fanfic! So be gentle! I am a fan, and have been for a long time! But I may improvise when it comes to terminology, how they work and their functions. I will try my best to keep them all in character and this story tales place after the second movie - so yes - this fic contains spoilers! So do not read if you haven't yet seen the films!**

This story came to me on one single idea, then I built my story up around it. So I hope you enjoy this fanfiction!

BTW this story takes place one year after the second movie.

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**Chapter 1: A discovery**

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The world; Earth, had much to be learned from. Though Megatron had made it clear on many an occasion that the earthlings were nothing but insects on a worthless planet, Optimus saw with growing interest and empathy that mankind was resourceful, resilient and full of cunning. They had paved their own way for generations. Not long ago, Sam had told him a brief history of mankind. The wars. The eras. The overcoming of their own losses and the profitable gain of technology.

Though mankind were small and weak individually, as a whole they were powerful. Loyal. And above all, tactical and valorous.

There was a period on Earth when the decepticons retreated entirely into the mountains or hid away within the human world. Perhaps for a strategic regrouping or merely to plot, scheme or repair deep wounds. During this cold period, Optimus and the others spread out further across the globe; exploring. And making themselves more at home. All secretively to benefit mankind and to shy away from the spying optics of the enemy.

Optimus Prime, leader of the autobots, remained with Sam Witwicky more out of guardian loyalty. Sam pushed him to go and explore with the others. What Sam was really trying to say was; 'have fun. Try and do something else instead of fighting all the time.'

Truth was, Prime didn't know what else to do but fight, slay and defend. He had been doing it for so long, for so hard, that he had forgotten what else there was to do.

Sam was busy with his own life now. It was easy for a human to turn and say to another how to relax, turn from life's problems. Ignore due responsibility. It was as if they, as a species, saw it as an accolade for being protective but not for defending one's ulterior function. It was almost as though they found it - needless.

Only last night, Sam had ridden his old bike that he had kept from childhood and rode down to a sparse countryside with a disused bridge and a dried up lake. They met as often as they could. Discussing certain details. Information. But none of them had much to say until at last, Sam, annoyed said; "you worry too much. You and your autobots. Life's like a puzzle sometimes. You don't quite know when you'll get the piece that fit. So let the pieces fall where they may. Let destiny do its job."

"Sam – it isn't like that –"

"So you keep saying." The annoyance levels in his voice heightened. "Just let it go. Please. If you keep fighting – and find no peace in-between the mess and the chaos, then you are all truly war machines."

"We aren't Sam. We don't know what we're supposed to be. We're ageless. Timeless. We've lived on Cybertron for a millennia, yet somehow we don't know how it all started. What created us. And what our purpose is. Maybe that is the true thing that drives Megatron. He tries to hide this hole in our memory by creating purpose for himself and the future, even if it's the wrong path to choose."

"Why do you think Cybertron is so special anyway? And you autobots?" Sam, who had left his old bike that had seen better days resting by a stone pillar by the lee of the bridge, approached it with his hands wedged deeply in his pockets. To Optimus he suddenly looked a lot older. "We humans believe there's a purpose. But there isn't. We each have Gods. Destinies. Myths and legends. But we're merely life forms in the cosmos of space, right?"

Optimus stayed quiet. He didn't appreciate Sam getting sour on him or losing his patience. He just wanted the human to share some inkling to an understanding.

Sam rested his hand on the bike handle bars and a wry smile crossed his lips. But to Prime, it looked mocking in a childish way. "So your life's consumed by war and strife. I get it," he agreed without sounding like he did, "but when you die, do you really die and go to a heaven? An afterlife? Or do you just corrode and fall to rusty bits like this lifeless chrome bike in my hands?"

"Sam – please."

"No, Optimus. I'm sorry. Just – think about it. That's all I'm asking." And the boy leapt onto his bike as lithe as a puma and raced off back down the beaten track through the course countryside from whence he came.

Optimus Prime remained hidden under the deft shadows of a thick crop of oak trees that had been left to grow by the fringes of the abandoned field. "An afterlife." He didn't say it as a question. Merely a thought that run through his sensors.

Filled with self-doubt and even a touch of general self-loathing that slithered and oozed through his emotions and thoughts like loose electricity without a place or a purpose, Optimus drove in his alt-form through the forlorn country roads more to fill himself with an active purpose than to sit and do nothing. The other vehicles he passed were all unaffiliated and he sensed no life in them - neither autobots or decepticons.

Night fell and speckled the sky in stars that looked like lost jewels in the inky night-time heavens.

With his truck lights beaming out the way ahead in a flash of yellow incandesce that cut through the abominable darkness, he came to the outer reaches of a grotty, poor town. Used cola cans besotted the streets. Rubbish furred every patch of greenery to be seen.

A food outlet diverted his attention. Attracted by all the fancy purple lighting, noise and car activity, Optimus joined the queue of cars leading up to a fast food drive-through.

_With no decepticons around - what does one do with oneself?_

As the queue began to thin, he pulled up by the outlet. There was a window and a woman looking out gloomily at him from atop a sill. Beside her was a cash register and a box of change. "What will it be, sir?" She asked after at first getting no response from him.

Naturally, Optimus had already pulled out his human disguise. A holographic image of a man wearing a cowboy hat looked back out at her from his cab window.

Taking his hesitant silence as someone with poor deciding skills, she said at length; "we're doing a special today as it's Tuesday. You can get three diet colas for every box of Mc Wings purchased." A pale, white hand flicked her golden hair back while her blue eyes studied him with tedium.

If only she knew she was asking a robot alien from outer space.

"Ma'am, do you know where the nearest scarp yard is from here, please?"

She took his innocent question as a planned insult. "We don't do scrap yards here and I am not a guide for tourists!" She spat the words out at him as if he had just called her a whore.

"Sorry - it's just that I -"

"Do you want the Mc Wings or not?" She took another one of his pauses to jab a thumb at the exit in front where there was another outlet in the building for food pick-ups. The car behind beeped its horn, adding to the woman's frustration. He could clearly see the anger break out across her face like an egg exploding in a hot pan.

"Sorry for troubling you." He mumbled before engaging into first gear and pulling out of the drive-through.

_Humans are so - impatient._

They never seemed to enjoy the world they were on and to see its simplicity. Maybe that was what happened when creatures had such short lives. They rushed it away even faster.

Snapping into a higher acceleration, Optimus raced down the country and out of town. Scrap yards were never far away. Everybody had or needed one. With the amount of cars people purchased - broke or dumped - there was bound to be one that accepted all dispensed and old cars.

Scrap yards had become a haunt for the autobot leader. Not only were they places to seek decepticons out where they might have been injured and gone into further hiding, but it was also a place to investigate manmade things. Use their tools to build other inventions, or simply a place to heal with no one watching. Because, late at night, scrap yards were one of the loneliest places in the world.

It wasn't until much later that Optimus had found what he was looking for. It was in the dead of night. A cold, icy wind snapped through the trees and screamed like singing banshees. The moon, bright and darkly foreboding despite its cool color, bathed the world below it in frosty cream and ghostly silver. The cars in the scrap yard gleamed brokenly under the moon's vigil spotlight. Tires, some smashed, lay like burnt giant donuts. Engines, pipes and wires lay twisted like intestines.

Optimus pulled into the scarp yard and crashed through the thick, heavy silence like a sledgehammer through porcelain. At once he unfolded out into his former state. No one was here to see. He was safe at last to be out of hiding in vehicle form.

Once his gears and parts had nestled away and fallen back into place, wheels and all, Optimus walked saliently across the muddied, tussled earth of a car rubbish pit. Scraps of metal were as abundant as the rats here. A long, yellow crane stood against the desolate night like an envoy to its human makers.

Like a child with something new to play with, Optimus at once embezzled himself to the heaps of scrap, iron and car carcasses with steel fascination. His powerful metal hands dug deep into soft car tissue and rummaged hard for anything of interest or even something of use to Ratchet. Steel plates were good to weld onto an open wound if it was not healing quick enough. Old TV sets that still worked often allowed them to watch soap operas or commercials. Keyboards were a revel of wires that could be used in an array of functions.

He heard something rattle behind him. He shuddered more out of anticipation than fear. He turned quickly, setting his optics on the mound of cars that were squashed into compact boxes behind him. His scanners picked up nothing threatening. Only a racoon as it dashed for safer cover. He smiled as he watched two youngsters follow it.

However, there would be no pivotal material tonight. The scrap yard, though quite big in itself, was really nothing more but a damp graveyard steaming with rotten cars, rusty engines and concrete fencing. Normally there'd be hard electrical equipment, appliances and tiny metal gems in a desert of crap.

He turned to leave, already planning ahead and thinking of which dirt lane to traverse and where to journey to next. Which post he should keep watch at or perhaps to return to base entirely and rest.

His scanners picked up something.

It was just at the edge of his vision. A blot on the map. Either way, the readings flared up and he couldn't ignore it. A warning flooded his whole system.

_A decepticon._

Somewhere - in the remote scrap yard.

Stepping with more care, he scanned the cars laying around him like decapitated bodies amongst mountains of rubbish, fuel tanks and radios. His internal radar was screaming. Then - almost on top of the threat - he saw it. Or thought he did. A dark shape, a mechanical cocoon lay in the dark recesses of motor parts and wires. Intrigued, and not the least bit affronted or intimidated, simply because of the thing's small size, Optimus approached with the remotest of caution.

It was ball shaped and about the size of his palm. His readings clearly raged at him that this was an enemy. A decepticon; born and bred.

Maybe, however, it had come off of another robot; like an arm or part of a leg. And his readings were simply mistaking it for a threat.

Something within him urged him to leave it the hell alone. Go away. Go back to base. See Sam even. But not to touch it or go even ten feet near it.

Autobots shared an ample weakness akin with mankind.

Curiosity.

Optimus reached out a finger - and touched it.

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Dib07: What do ya think? Update coming soon and i love reviews!


	2. Chapter 2

**Transformers: Optimus Prime**

**Machinations**

Rating: T

**Warning: **May contain violence, peril and dark themes.

* * *

_**Summery: **__The decepticons have gone back into hiding. Sam wants a normal life. Optimus Prime adopts a small decepticon baby and the autobots believe that it is the beginnings of a seeded plot by Megatron._

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Dib07: Thanks for the reviews! Sorry for long update!

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**Chapter 2: EX-01**

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Optimus regretted his actions as soon as he had delved in the misfortunes of physical contact.

As though cutting his finger on the sharp edge of a knife, the autobot leader drew back, pained and startled. Only too late he saw a long metallic blue line of electrical wire snap onto his chest while watching the metal cocoon unfurl like a butterfly lazy from the throes of warm hibernation. The electrical wire came from the tiny creature. Came from the tip of its abdomen like an elongated sting from a wasp. And the more Optimus tried to twist and turn away from it - the more it hurt and drove sharp spears of pain through his chest and body. Even as his hands came down to rip it out of him, a powerful electric discharge irefully shot his hands with burning agony.

He quickly went through his options and dutifully pushed back the panic that was close to enveloping his systems completely. _Destroy the thing. Get rid of it and then that'll annihilate the trap I've got myself into._

The cocoon, shiny and silvery like the stagnant moon pouring light onto the graveyard of cars below, was unveiled. A tiny thing, a creature with two arms, two wide red eyes and a large head peered up to look at him. It was clearly a decepticon as his readings had initially told him. But it was a baby one. Barely large or strong enough to defend for itself.

As Optimus rose a curled fist to smash the baby into oblivion, it saw doom approaching, and cried out in perpetual fear.

"No!" It sung in an unearthly tone that sent pangs of regret into Optimus, "no! Don't!"

Complying to its frantic request, Optimus knelt down to get closer to it and lowered his raised fist. "Disengage me." He told it, his voice thick and demanding.

"Can't," it replied with remorse, "do not know how to -"

Optimus sighed. The line didn't hurt him so long as he didn't struggle or try to touch it. He was more than certain that if he got this decepticon baby to calm down and trust him, it would let go automatically.

Well - that was the plan.

"Where do you come from, little one?" Optimus asked it.

Fully uncurled, the small creature resembled a human infant with large, inquisitive eyes, a large head, small lower body and tiny fingers and arms. On its back in the centre was a twitching tail and a rift of ports. It had no visible weaponry that Optimus could discern, neither did it look capable of killing anything.

"Do not know." It said, looking fleetingly about it like a nervous rabbit in the middle of a farmer's bobbie trapped field, "do not - know -"

"What do you remember last?" It was hard to keep his patience levels up. It was not easy talking to a creature that had him literally hooked up. At any moment he could come under attack via marauding decepticons.

"Nothing." Its large red optics rested on his, "just dark. Darkness. Cold. Lost."

Optimus sighed. The creature must have been brought here for whatever reason or dumped - not destroyed. And left for perhaps a very long time. Either way, it didn't seem like it was about to give him any proper answers.

"You - with Megatron?" Optimus asked with a much slower cadence.

The creature shook its beefy head.

Worried how vulnerable he must look, Optimus needed to free himself. His plan was not working. The creature was not freeing him, though it had no need to keep him trapped.

He moved and he pulled. The pain was much less now. It didn't rage inside of him like hot seething needles. But still he could not free himself.

Though this decepticon infant was half the size of Sam, it weighed at least forty iron balls and Optimus could not shake it off of him.

Growing desperate, Optimus heaved away using his large feet. When that failed he transformed into a truck and reversed as hard as he could. His wheels screeched and whined against the hard dirt. But the single wire - that looked as fragile as glass and as thin as thread - did not snap. The creature however looked most upset. Through Optimus's attempts to gain freedom, the creature began to move forwards as Optimus swung left from right. As if hurt, the baby creature burst into tears and bellowing screams.

Just like a human infant.

Perplexed and worried that he had caused it damage, Optimus stopped he endeavours and reverted back to robot form.

Unsurely, he knelt down and cupped his giant hand around it. "Easy, easy," he told it, worried its baleful noises would attract unwanted attention, "I'm sorry if I hurt or startled you. You are obviously not as you first appeared to be. You are, special. You are not like the other decepticons."

He could already hear Ironhide ranting and raving in his head; '_fool! Do not trust everything that comes falling out of a tree! What if it's plotting something, Optimus?' _

"Special." It reiterated happily.

"Can you stand?"

The creature nodded. A new set of tiny legs sprang outwards from its abdomen. Then, shakily like a newborn lamb, it stood at Optimus' request.

It least it had calmed down.

Almost favourably as if its red colored optics were offensive, they changed and brightened into a dappled yellow.

"Your name?" Optimus prompted it.

It stood for a moment or two, thinking about it. Optimus waited. Then, coming up with an answer, it stated proudly at last; "EX-01."

"That's not a name. That's your barcode or serial number. What's your name?"

The creature shrugged. Another human-like expression that only awed Optimus further. "EX-01."

"Will you come with me?" Optimus asked it, "I'm sure my fellow autobots will be equally as mystified as I am. And awed by you. You certainly are - different." _And maybe Ratchet will be able to take you off me._

"Okay." It fervently replied.

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It was daybreak. The sun streaked out across the hills and cliffs in feverish earnest. Ironhide awaited his leader at the top of one of the sun-baked hills looking out across an oasis of green land. Not a single human road marred such a perfect sight. Yet its splendour and virgin beauty didn't lessen the homesickness that Ironhide felt. Nothing even closely compared to the rustic quality, ingenuity and grandeur that was Cybertron.

Soon, he could see Optimus rushing towards him with alarming alacrity. The large peterbilt truck thundered down the hillside behind him where the last roads disappeared and left only grassland and stunted woodland. The sun rays shimmered off of Optimus' paintwork; causing the flames to dance and shine as if they were really alive and burning.

"What took you?" Ironhide reprimanded as soon as his leader trundled up the hill and reformed before his fellow autobot. As soon as he had finished transforming, Optimus peeled out his hand and showed him the creature that sat on his palm like a toy.

"Look," said Prime, "I found it in Unison's Scarp yard way beyond where I normally go. It was just lying amongst the debris -"

Ironhide sniffed at it. The creature started to curl back into its shell from the alarm of being shoved in front of a stranger. "- waiting to be found." Ironhide finished for him, looking distrustfully at Optimus' find. "It's a decepticon. An evil little parasite. Why show me this, Prime?" He looked up and noticed the thin blue line of wire leading from the little beast's tail and into his leader's chest. "What the hell has it done to you?" At once, Ironhide backed away and opened up both his cannons on his hands. They simultaneously aimed at the tiny thing sitting on Prime's hand.

Instinctively, Optimus covered EX-01 from Ironhide's sight and drew it to his chest. "Stop being so hasty, Ironhide. It's only an infant. A creature newly born into this world. It has no concept of good or evil, neither has it anything to do with Megatron. It's helpless."

"How can you be so sure?" Ironhide dropped his weapons, lest he look ready to blast his own comrade and leader, "and answer my question, Optimus! Or I'll signal all your damn autobots to take that thing out! It isn't right, you know!"

Optimus stood defiantly. "His name is EX-01. All he's done is defend himself. He means no harm."

"Destroy it! Bury it!" Ironhide persisted venomously. "It might be a walking time bomb! And you're screwed if it is! Remove it, quickly!"

Optimus did not share the simply fact that he couldn't. "We must learn from EX-01. Maybe it's a way forward. It's a sign of something - I can feel it."

"A trap!" Ironhide shook his head angrily. "You fool! You are your own worst enemy, Optimus! Let me take it off you!"

"Do not worry about me." Optimus took a few pondering steps back, "continue your patrols. You will report directly to me if you see any decepticons." He began to transform back into his truck form.

"I'll report all right!" Ironhide roared after him, just as his leader took off again. "I'll report to the autobots what you're doing! They'll speak sense into you! And so will NEST!"

Steam billowing from his steel pillars, Optimus rode over the grassy embankments and scrub while the baby decepticon sat in the front driver's seat, investigating his controls and playing with the remote for the cabin radio that he had newly installed only a week or so ago. It had been from Sam. The young man had celebrated their anniversary. It had been exactly three years since their coming to earth after the All-Spark. And to show how important it was to him, he spent an evening with them and imparted to each autobot a gift. To the autobots the gifts weren't much but must have cost Sam a bundle. The twins got an Xbox 360 between them. Whether it was still in one piece Optimus would never know. Ironhide got a whole box of explosive ammunition (courtesy of NEST), though later Ironhide dumped it, and cursed such primitive ammo. Ratchet got a TV and a Skybox. He just loved soap operas. Bumble Bee an Ipod. And Optimus a radio that could link into almost any station available, including police transmissions and military radio waves. And of course, music.

Ever since then, Sam went back to his duty of being an ordinary man with a life. And his relationship with the autobots was growing cold and distant.

Meanwhile, Ironhide threw himself into vehicle mode and drove hard to base. Soon the sun blanched behind darkening clouds that loomed like dark flocks of bats. Rain poured out and covered the world into a dreary storm. Wind wipers battling for supremacy against the thick, heavy rain, Ironhide entered Sam's neighbourhood in as little as an hour, having already broadcasted to his comrades to come and meet him there.

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TBC

Dib07: Please review and leave a comment! Thank you!


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